mercenaries – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Now on YouTube: Libya–Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency

While the audio is somewhat clearer, and the video motion is “smoother” for those using older computers, the disadvantage is that the video had to be cut into two parts given restrictions placed on my account by YouTube. Overall, however, the file sizes are smaller than they were originally, so the video should also be […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

LIBYA: Race, Empire, and the Invention of Humanitarian Emergency

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/51851726 w=594&h=334] Based on my latest book, Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War On Libya and Africa (Baraka Books, Montreal, 2012), and nearly two years of extensive documentary research, this film places the 2011 US/NATO war in Libya in a more meaningful context than that of a war to “protect civilians” driven by the urgent need […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Andrew Garfield’s Commercial Plea for War Research, and the Reality of Ethics in Human Terrain Teams

Two very different, but related, items have been published online this past week, related to the Human Terrain System and embedding anthropologists/social scientists in counterinsurgency. The first one I mention–unsurprisingly published by the Small Wars “Journal” –is written by Andrew Garfield of Glevum Associates, a private defense contractor that we have encountered here many times […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Innocently Informing State Terrorism: Journalism, Knowledge, and Counterinsurgency

With President Barack Obama sending at least 30,000 additional American troops to knock the Taliban off-balance and a U.S.-led offensive in Helmand province, a better understanding of today’s Taliban is central to the effort to defeat them and to begin withdrawing some American troops from Afghanistan in summer 2011. (McClatchy, 14 March 2010) A very […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

These Fine, Young, Humanitarian…Zombies

Yes, indeed, as predicted a movie is now out featuring the dead “cultural warrior,” the scholar in military uniform, the applied social scientist deep in the trenches of Afghanistan. He may be dead, but he’s back, and he’s coming right at you, over and over again in… No, that is not the movie (which does […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Zombie Humanitarians: It’s Obama’s Human Terrain System Now

A believer in the forms of sorcery commonly associated with Haiti should be forgiven for thinking that the souls of miscreant, anti-communal academics had been captured by the Pentagon and bottled up in military uniforms, resulting in the creation of zombies. Like the so-called living dead, the Human Terrain System keeps coming back from the […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

On the conduct of military “contractors” in Afghanistan: In the words of Paula Loyd (1.7)

Since Paula Loyd (36 years old) was set on fire by an Afghan Taliban man, Abdul Salam, on November 4, 2008, there has been a considerable outpouring of messages of grief and condolences for Loyd online, in the United States particularly. Another member of the U.S. Army Human Terrain Team to which Loyd belonged, a […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

In the world of the mercenary, colonialism is past, present, and future

On one day alone, three top news stories appear in the Associated Press and on the cover page of Yahoo! that deal with mercenaries: U.S., Iraqis discuss Blackwater’s status BAGHDAD – U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad’s demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear […]